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The campaign for the Scottish Parliament election of 2016 has lacked the energy and enthusiasm of #indyref1 or the general election of 2015. The winner has been known from the start – and long before. Most commentators have focussed on who comes second and becomes the official opposition in Holyrood.

Politically, Scotland looks promising with regards to gender equality. One of Nicola Sturgeon’s first acts as First Minister was to announce a 50/50 gender equal cabinet, and to stay characteristically calm and dismissive in the face of criticism. This sent an important symbolic message about her style of politics, which added to the fact that the leaders of the three main parties are women, the co-convener of the Scottish Greens is a woman, and four of the party leaders are also openly gay or bisexual. The importance of this symbolically cannot be underestimated.

While pollsters have the result of the UK's EU referendum as too close to call, the bookies have Remain comfortably ahead. Prof David Bell will be monitoring the odds through the remaining campaign with results updated here. Updated chart - 16 June 2016.

Newcomers to a devolved political environment can find it bewildering says political scientist and incomer, Dr Matthew Wall, Senior Lecturer in Politics at Swansea University. Here he offers a few pointers for the Welsh election.

The electoral system for the Scottish Parliament means that candidates rejected by voters in the constituency section may still find themselves in Holyrood, courtesy of the regional lists. Malcolm Harvey suggests that those very parliamentarians may be called on to address this quirk in the system in the next session.

James Mitchell looks at the approaching Holyrood election in May and how the SNP is expected to extend its lead despite the common view in 2011 that winning an overall majority was a freak, unrepeatable result. This blog originally appeared on the Academy of Government website.

In the first of our new blog series, Politics in a Changing Spain, Dr Robert Liñeira (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) looks at the recent parliamentary election and its implications for the future of Spanish politics.

In their contribution to our majority nationalism series, Antoine Bilodeau of Concordia University and Luc Turgeon of the University of Ottawa share the result of their survey which compares the way in which Quebecers and Canadians construct community boundaries.